Some of what I need to do

Take time away from the clamour and nonsense of everyday business. Go for walks. Visit a hill or two. Turn clay on the wheel. Apply glazes. Make drawings. Meditate.

Raku with Nirmala Patwardhan

In the fifties she travelled to Germany and UK to learn about pottery and glazes. She has a glaze that is named after her. She is particular about how a place is kept. She is very systematic. At close-to-eighty she is passionate about glazes. "Raku" she explains means joy and happiness, pleasure and well being, contemplation and meditation. "We had so little of that, I am sorry" she says. "It is my doing. I should not have been so harsh with the students." The workshop after some initial uncertainty because Sandeep's uncle's heart-attack, went off well. However, there is much to be learnt in the things that Nirmala Patwardhan spoke about. Sounds like a lament for a rigour that is missing - and since one cannot demand this of another, it is best that we begin journeys that take us into the heart of our own limitations.

Dr Jehangir Sorabjee above Bombay

Here is a doctor who loves his patients and photographs in equal measure. A doctor lives in close proximity with the dying - but that perhaps does not explain Sorabjee's urge to carry his camera to cemeteries. Death, has always been a subject for artists. Whether in Paris or Istanbul, Barcelona or Bombay - one comes across the buried and the dead - their resting places adorned with plaques and statuary. "My friends," says Sorabjee are amongst the best photographers in Bombay and they are very critical of my work. That does not stop Sorabjee from continuing in his adventures with the camera. Sometimes at ten in the night, after dinner - I call a close friend and we go out for photographing Bombay in the night - that's the new work that I am doing. A few years ago, Sorabjee got a whole lot of permissions to fly over Bombay and reveal views that the city and its people had never seen before. If there is one lesson to be learnt - it is about a love for whatever one does.

Dr. Anil Sadgopal on Neo-Liberal Education

Dr. Sadgopal presented an analysis that suggests that the neo-liberal education policies compromise on some of the earlier ideas on primary education laid down in the constitution. Dr. Sadgopal suggests that the notions of decentralization; and doing away with land acquisition controls arise out of forces that seek to undermine the Indian state; and that the market-based outlook that transforms the ministry of education to the ministry of human-resources - reduces the human being to a resource.

Dr. Sadgopal envisages political struggles - by the Dalits, by Muslims and by women as forces that will humanize the oppressors.

The dividing mind

Jiddu Krishnamurti narrates an anecdote where man finds delight in organizing and re-organizing the truth with the help of the mind. It does appear that the mind can look at anything only by dividing. When seeing happens through the mind - the act of seeing, separates the seer from the seen; with a mind that is silent - the seer becomes the seen. One becomes adept at writing this sort of thing after a stint with K stuff, zen and such like.

The theatre fest concluded yesterday. Was in pain because of a sore throat and found breathing difficult. Pain drives away all enthusiasm - and reveals the hanging sword that shall one day bring our physical selves to transit into the earth.

When morning came, I put together the framework for the talk. Thought of Rashid Khan and music, weighed theatre against music and watched the conditioned mind at work - dis-ordering and ordering! I must go back to Tibet!

Living in nature

Strange that I should want to get away to some quiet place - considering that I live in nature. All the windows where I live look out at majestic raintrees. What makes me want to get away to some place that is quieter? Perhaps I let my professional life spill over. Perhaps the city of Bombay with its relentless industrial logic spills over. Perhaps the times that we live in spill over into my being and make me feel like "getting away". I remember my father's abode on the banks of a mighty river - humid and sultry in summer; green and fecund; oppressive and calming in turns. I could easily get away to that abode and yet I do not. Is this a nostalgic longing - gilded only when it exists as a longing?

An inner monologue

It is strange how an editing filter starts operating the moment I start to write down things. Good theatre, like good writing makes visible the inner monologue, thus becoming a mirror that allows a collective engagement with inner movements. The price that an actor (or a writer) must pay is to offer her or his own inner self to the scrutiny of the collective eye. Should this spectacle contain the light of a hard-won truth, the audience goes back renewed or even transformed - this is the reward for the actor who dares to appear on stage, bereft of the masks that we shield our selves with.

Clearly it is theatre-actor- unlike the cinema-actor who has the protective distance of the camera and editing who undertakes a far-more arduous venture. And on a day on which the inner monologues of the writer, the director, and the audience come close enough for synapses - sparks can fly!

Art and the Spirit

Art without Spirit shall fall prey to the Marxist Critique of Art - which is a critique that all artists should pass through - like a baptism through fire.

Pride and Prejudice

Two things (amongst many others) that keep us from a connection with our real selves - Pride and Prejudice! Freud (the third Jew according to Shilpa) spoke of how it is all about love for our mothers (and fathers) and thus a man (and a woman) might apparently transcended this infantile urge for love and attention and yet hanker after recognition, fame. The winner paints the town red, the loser plots in underground bunkers - the silent stays away from the currents of pride and prejudice.

Would be good to get the scripts of the plays. A bicycle. Dogs. Two brothers in what can be spoken of as sibling rivalry and is yet not that - Premchand's language carries with it all the nuances of cultural evocations. The worship that the elder brother evokes from the younger one - supremely content to merely be a shadow - running behind. Quite amazing to see these sixty year old tales still weave their magic! What makes singing special is that it needs just a human voice to sing (or a sparrows for that matter!) - no add-ons. What makes theatre special is that the voice holds together a room full of grown-up people happily engaged. The transformative capacity that art has is marvellous!